Sports

Big inning escapes, dooms Archbishop Molloy

Archbishop Molloy saw bit of itself in St. Francis Prep. The Stanners have made a living this season off late comebacks and big innings. This time they watched their rivals do just that to them.

“They had one good inning where they scored a lot of runs, which is what we normally do,” Molloy centerfielder Jen DeMaria said.

St. Francis Prep sent 13 batters to the plate, including nine straight at one point, and scored eight runs in the sixth inning. Molloy, which held a two-run lead coming into the inning, couldn’t generate a rally of its own and fell 10-4 on its Senior Day in CHSAA Brooklyn/Queens softball Monday at Cunningham Park. It snaps a 28-game league winning streak and hopefully for the Stanners refocuses them before the playoffs.

“This isn’t a bad thing,” Molloy coach Maureen Rosenbaum said. “This is a wakeup call. It’s a reminder you have to play your absolute best.”

Her team grabbed a run in the first on a Maria Palmeri sac fly and two more in the fourth on an RBI single from Dana Moss and a run-scoring double by Marissa Puzino to take a 3-0 lead. A ball got by Julia Lipovac in the second, allowing two SFP runs scored, but DeMaria, who scored twice, came home on a throw to first to give Molloy (12-1) a 4-2 advantage after five.

Palmeri had allowed just three hits up until that point, pounding the lower half of the strike zone. Rosenbaum said her sophomore ace felt like she was getting squeezed in the zone and let it affect her on the mound. When she left the game and was replaced by Victoria Goldbach, the Terriers (8-4) already had six runs in and Palmeri walked two, hit a batter and was getting hit uncharacteristically hard.

“She lost her focus and then she started putting the ball over the plate a little bit more and they can hit,” Rosenbaum said.

She hopes her team heeds the message she tried to warn then about last week with the regular season now complete. They can’t wait for the big inning and the rally and need to be aggressive at the plate early and throughout.

“We needed this,” DeMaria said. “This never happened to us before. I think we kept thinking, ‘It’s alright we will have that inning.’ We never had it. … In the playoffs we will come strong, we will come out screaming in the beginning. We won’t wait to the end.”